How Advertising Manipulates you (Even When You Think it Doesn’t) (IB ENGLISH B HL: Personal Response Example)

How Advertising Manipulates you (Even When You Think it Doesn’t)

We see ads every day, whether it is from your device or just driving down the road, it is everywhere. It is easy to say that advertisements are a nuisance that’s always trying to interfere with our lives and interrupt us without accepting the idea that advertisements are manipulative and affects our buying habits. However if you think advertising didn’t work, wouldn’t ads be thrown out years ago? Here is a look at why advertising works and influences everyone.

Brand recognition

When purchasing a product that we haven’t bought before, we tend to pick a product from a brand that we have actually heard before. This is proof that even though we might not be aware of it but advertisements have subliminally controlled our decisions. This is also proof that ads help develop a trust relationship with brands and their products. This is why brand logos are placed everywhere on advertisements and even on merchandise.

Product Attachment

Without us realizing, advertisements make us feel a strong attraction for a product. Businesses will try to make us familiar to their products through their ads and play with our emotions by enticing us using attractive illustrations, texts, models, and more. This makes us believe to ourselves that we can only feel satisfied by purchasing the advertised product.

Even though ads might not seem like it influence you, think again because subliminally it has planted information that in reality will affect your decisions.